The Terrior Column and Enclosurehttp://www.doaks.org/gardens/virtual-tour/the-south-front/ggr-virtual-tour-06
The South Front

Beneath a large weeping willow is the Terrior Column, modeled after a nineteenth-century terrier tomb that Farrand saw in her travels to Naples, Italy. Close to the column, in an area enclosed by bamboo and a lacebark elm, is a lead-roofed garden seat, originally designed as a swing by Farrand. The side panels represent Aesop's fables of the fox and the crane, and the fox, crow, and cheese.

After the Garden Library was built in 1964 in a formerly wooded section of the property, Ruth Havey designed a garden and walkway system to complement the library's design. Her Ribbon Walk of brick and carved limestone edges curves through deciduous magnolias, hydrangeas, Epimedium, and mixed bulb plantings. The Bird Bath Garden, built around a fountain of a boy holding a carp, was designed to be viewed from the Mediterranean Highway, an interior hallway connecting the main house with the museums.

When the Blisses purchased Dumbarton Oaks, the South Lawn was filled with oaks and elms. Robert Bliss commented that the house had no particular charm and the grounds [were] unkempt and in places overgrown but the beautiful trees gave promise of possibilities to a gardener. Because many of these old specimens died within the next twenty years, Farrand suggested planting a considerable number of small trees among the roots of the larger trees, but this planting was never implemented.

To create additional privacy and to frame the view of the house from the street, Farrand added a mixture of evergreen trees to the existing deciduous. Along the R Street border, she planted a screen of trees and shrubbery arranged so that passersby will not feel crudely excluded and yet privacy will be secured for the owners.

]]>No publisherSouth LawnGardensSouth Front2011/12/08 07:30:00 GMT-4PageSouth Side of the Househttp://www.doaks.org/gardens/virtual-tour/the-south-front/ggr-virtual-tour-01
The South Front

The plantings on the south side of the house include boxwoods, Pyracantha, and hollies, chosen by Beatrix Farrand both to complement the scale of the building and to nestle it within its setting. In some cases Farrand enhanced the house's design. She trained wisteria up the sides and across the tops of the doorways, at the main entrance to the house and the center entrance to the Orangery. Farrand screened some features of the house. She planted low shrubbery in front of the basement windows to screen the windows from the entrance drive yet allow light into the basement. She masked the front balustrade, which the Blisses found unattractive, with a mixture of jasmine and ivy pruned back to reveal some of the stone's design.

In describing the large Katsura and Japanese maple that predated her design work, Farrand wrote These trees…make a foliage border to the lawn difficult to equal for character and delicacy. She added a mixture of evergreen trees and shrubbery including boxwood, American holly, Mahonia, and Japanese holly. Between the evergreens, she added deciduous forsythia, Viburnum, and Philadelphus. Groundcover next to the brick path included Helleborus, ferns, and spring bulbs.

Farrand described the East Lawn to be one of the loveliest of the features of Dumbarton Oaks in its freedom from detail. Its generous scale and graceful slopes add quiet to the design. She planted two large clumps of tree box in converging lines on either side of the lawn to lengthen its perspective as seen from the house. She suggested plantings for the edges to screen the house from the adjoining streets and frame the lawn. Farrand took care to slope the plant mixture down from the height of the taller material to the flatness of the lawns using intermediate-sized shrubbery including boxwood, American hollies, and the green-leaved Aucuba.